Radio Broadcast (May-Oct 1922)

74 RADIO BROADCAST been responsible for many innovations — many new uses, some oj which passed out of human ken, others were repeated again and again until to-day we have ceased to wonder and he thrilled when we chance to read newspaper accounts of such doings. Thus, we have the Radio Reporter, the first authentic, instances being that of reporter Sprague of the Los Angeles Examiner who, pressed for time and an urgent desire to "scoop" the other sheets, commandeered the radio telephone set of a local army officer in order to report an unusual sporting event. Then there is the Radio Detective who came into his own during the war and of whom more will he said in a future number. The Radio Doctor has again and again proved his worth at sea and many a sailor owes his life to a medical consultation held by radio from ship to ship or from ship to land. The initial success of the Radio Actor, or Actors, who have broadcasted an entire play over the radio telephone still rings in our ears. Then we have radio as the leading factor in the lives of the gunrunner, the smuggler, the arch criminal, the Central American revolutionist, the international spy, the cast-away sailor, and so we might go on indefinitely, for the exploits of radio are legion; some of which stand out as monuments of scientific achievements; others are ignominious ones to which this noble art has been unwittingly subjected. All of these nevertheless are intensely interesting, breathing of the very spirit of adventure and romance. To this end, it will be the purpose of this department to report each month, radio adventures that actually took place, with real human beings as principals. The series will range over the entire world with incidents taking place in Sweden, Patagonia, and far-off fapan, as well as in the United States. The editors would be glad to receive accounts of such radio adventures from readers of the magazine, either their own experiences in the first person or authentic experiences of others. FOUND BY RADIO By PIERRE BOUCHERON ONE of the most romantic stories of k the power of radio is the story of I the finding of Cleo Archer. In January, 1920, Lester Archer was a young radio amateur living in Toledo, Ohio. This was before the day of widespread radio telephone broadcasting. With his radio set using the Continental Morse Code this young man accomplished in a short time what his mother, lawyer, and private detective agencies had been trying to do for thirteen years. At the age of five, Cleo Archer, Lester's sister, had been secretly placed in the Allen County Children's Home of Ohio by unfriendly relatives. To find Cleo became the life aim of young Archer and his mother, Mrs. Dorothy Archer, and to this end, they visited other cities and towns in a vain search, meanwhile conducting a legal battle to compel the home authorities to divulge Cleo's whereabouts. In 1910, this young man, then but a boy in knee pants, became interested in amateur radio, and in a short time he had done what many thousand boys have since duplicated ; erected a complete sending and receiving station enabling him to converse at ease with local enthusiasts. For the next few years he spent a great deal of his spare time experimenting and improving his installation so that he was able in 1920 to send as far as 1,000 miles with his home-made transmitter, as well as to receive from the long distance high power stations at Nauen, Germany; Stavanger, Norway, and Lyons, France. In talking, or rather telegraphing, through the ether. Archer's radio acquaintances reached considerable proportions, until they included many amateurs from neighboring states. The greater portion, of course, he had never seen, but they nevertheless all belonged to the great fraternity of the ether. One of these radio friends was Mrs. Charles Candler, of St. Marys, Ohio, who, with her husband, operates the powerful amateur station "8ZL" now well known throughout the United States for its long distance records. One evening of January, 1920, young Archer was "talking" with Mrs. Candler in the comradery which radio boasts as its very own, when he conceived the idea of asking for her cooperation in broadcasting the "call" for his sister, Cleo. With the aid of the multitude of amateurs within the reach of "8ZL," Mrs.